Every year the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) does a day of action in defense of the rights of immigrants, the location for which has long been clear. From early in the morning, a diverse delegation representing New York state’s different ethnic communities head for Albany, where it conducts, either in the Capitol Building or on the steps, large meetings to present their demands and meet with elected officials to tell them about their problems. Our community, as a rule, is represented by members of the New York chapter of the American Association of Jews from the Former Soviet Union, the American Association of Veterans and Invalids of the Second World War, and also staff and volunteers from the Jewish Center in Bensonhurst. The action is usually coordinated around the arrival of the state budget, and the Immigration Coalition hands to lawmakers a sufficiently reasonable and original packet of recommendations.
In connection with these recommendations, one is reminded of the well-known film “Dave,” which tells the story of a simple American, who through an act of total chance winds up in the White House, and thanks to unusual financial decisions manages to drag the country out of a budget crisis. “Who balances their finances this way? If I did my budget like this, I would have been out of business long ago,” puzzles one of the characters, accountant Murray Blum, as he looks over the government’s financial ledgers. Blum’s sensible ideas and the courage of his friend Dave Kovic would be very welcome right now in Albany, where there is a genuine budget war going on between the New York Legislature and the state’s Governor, George Pataki. Both sides have decided to fight it out to the end, both have chosen the traditional and not particularly effective paths of drawing a line in the sand, entirely consistent with the view held by our immigrants about the two main parties in the U.S.A. (the Republicans are out to get the poor, the Democrats—the rich). However, this time the role of defenders of the poor is being played by both parties in the state legislature, while the role of defender of the rich is played by Governor Pataki.
The Democratic Assembly, whose chief representative is speaker Sheldon Silver, and the Republican Senate under the command of majority leader Joseph Bruno usually engage in bitter conflict but this time around, an almost-touching unity of spirit has appeared. They have been joined by the authority of the city of New York in the persons of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and speaker of the City Council Gifford Miller. The plan of this “Triumvurate” consists of the following: preserve current levels of funding for education and health care (including Medicaid), prevent the next increase in property taxes, but on the other hand temporarily/provisionally raise income taxes—on rich New Yorkers and sales tax—for all residents of the Empire State. Michael Bloomberg appears at times fearful of presenting this last item, it seems, as though it wasn’t singularly directed at enemies of working people.
The Governor did not simply take a bayonet to the legislators’ plan; he virtually declared a “holy war.” The traditional promise to block the plan with a veto was accompanied by threats to personally oppose unsupportive senators and deputies of the Assembly in the 2004 elections. It is Pataki’s deep conviction that these irresponsible people are driving us towards a “financial train wreck.”
“We were at a critical point in Albany, when both chambers of the legislature made the decision, in a friendly manner, to oppose the Governor’s plan,” says Director of the immigration department in the Jewish Community Center in Bensonhurst, Vladimir Vyshnevsky. “And at that point solidarity with big groups of immigrants was vital. The gathering together in the hall during the hearing of those who had left the widest variety of different countries, presenting clear outlines of their demands, made an incredibly strong impression...”
By the way, the New York Immigration Coalition’s informational packet also contained the Governor’s proposals, which they referred to as the “parliamentary packet” in Albany. Among them—the restoration of taxes on clothing and shoes of costs up to $110, an increase in the price of photographs taken for drivers licenses, an increase in the costs of tuition in city and state colleges and universities, and cuts (of $587 million dollars!) to funds for different social programs (support for education, the homeless, summer work for students, labor apprenticeship programs, legal help for the poor, assistance for single mothers, English classes for immigrants, etc.) The worst items in Pataki’s plan, in the view of the rights advocates, were the cuts in the state’s contributions to SSI—the federal grant program for invalids and senior citizens—and the decrease by $2 million dollars to Medicaid and other state-funded health insurance. From January of 2004, the monthly allowance for single senior citizens is slated to increase by $14, and for couples, by $21. The increase will not go through if Governor Pataki’s plan becomes a reality. And in the background of this all—the increase in the cost of public transportation and housing.
Pataki intends to leave 234,000 poor children without Medicaid, throwing them out of the Child Health Plus plan, which covers far from all medical services (for example, extended courses of treatment that handicapped children require). 47,000 adult New Yorkers will be thrown out of the Family Health Plus program and supplemental costs that senior citizens who receive “Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage” have to pay will increase by 10 percent.
The Immigration Coalition is not just protesting the Governor’s “medical” plans, they’re also offering a counter-proposal—to bring interpreters to New York’s public hospitals. “The language barrier between patients and health-care providers often results in inaccurate diagnoses and medical mistakes,” says NYIC Director Margie McHugh. “Patients have to resort to help from their relatives, forcing them to miss work, and lose money, or people who they happen to meet in hospital reception areas. Several states, for example, Washington, have already developed successful programs to provide hospitals with qualified interpreters.” The NYIC proposal would affect several important spheres—from legal assistance for the poor and support for agricultural workers to education and housing costs. According to the national coalitions for accessible housing for non-wealthy Americans, the state of New York has virtually the most expensive one- and two-bedroom apartments. More than 500,000 (one in four) New York families that rent an apartment pay more than half of their income for rent. “We are calling on the Governor and the legislature of the state to maintain apartment rental costs at a level that makes them affordable to working families,” says McHugh. “We want to see the preservation of existing subsidized housing, and the creation of new housing.”
NYIC considers it vital that financial support be provided for the Housing and Community Renewal Neighborhood Preservation Program, and similarly—the assignment of favorable terms to small homeowners who rent apartments at less than market value. NYIC has concrete proposals in connection with the new complexes, which would help build up lower Manhattan – setting aside 45% of new apartments for lower- and middle-income families.
The recommendations of NYIC for how to meet new expenditures bears many resemblances to the proposals of the legislature of the state of New York, for example, a moderate, provisional increase in income taxes for families with incomes about $150,000 a year. But there are other ideas—the resumption of taxes on people who work in New York City, but live in the suburbs, and tax on the sale of stocks. A symbolic tax—one cent for every stock sold—would help the city save up to $1.52 billion a year, which the city and state could divide between themselves.
The Russian-Jewish delegation took a very active role in the all the “episodes” of the day of immigrants. Two groups under the leadership of Vladimir Vyshnevsky and well-known rights advocate Inna Arolovich met with aides to Senator Raymond Mayor, Assembly Deputy Deborah Glick, and several other lawmakers, and told them about the problems in their community. “The Immigration Coalition always arranges meetings with key representatives of the legislature, on whom many important decisions depend,” says Vladimir Vyshnevsky. “I think usually all the ethnic groups in the Coalition have different demands, but for these meetings with deputies and senators the delegation shares all the responsibilities amongst itself. For example, everyone demanded the preservation of English classes, and access for seniors to affordable housing.
“And the Jewish Center in Bensonhurst had a concrete ‘extra’ demand,” added Jewish Community Center Volunteer William Gill, “preservation of our English courses and citizenship preparation classes. These classes are very effective: thanks to them, more than a thousand older immigrants have become citizens of the United States.”
I remember how last year at the same meeting there was such a stark contrast between the Russian-Jews and other delegations. Korean, Chinese, and Mexican communities brought young, energetic people (including young mothers with babies) who were completely clear on the reasons that they were there to fight. In comparison, our immigrants seemed like tourists, like a group of middle-aged folks taking a little trip to come and sightsee in Albany and lay their eyes on normally inaccessible senators and deputies. Since that time the Russian-Jewish community has really grown up a lot, and its representatives have turned out to have a lot more courage, independence, and wisdom – of the same quality that distinguished the above-mentioned film “Dave.”
“We made ourselves seen, we made our voices heard,” says the president of the Association of Veterans of the Second World War Boris Il’inski. “The most important thing isn’t even that we pushed for well-founded demands, but that we stood up for ourselves,” he says. “The deputies realize that immigrants are not some apathetic, disinterested mass, but that our interests are inextricably bound up with our community, and our state, and we’re ready to do something about it. The only thing I regret is that there weren’t young people with us.”
It’s true that there were no “Russian” young people, or even middle-aged people. In Vladimir Vyshnevsky’s opinion this is easy to explain – they are busy, because they work. But there is another, and in some ways even more understandable reason: the majority of young people (and not even all that young) who emigrated from the former Soviet Union associate themselves with conservatives who, in their view are politically much more distant from the communism that forced them to flee, than liberals. You’re more likely to find Russian-speaking Jews between the ages of 25 – 65 years old at meetings supporting the war in Iraq then at actions to defend the rights of all possible minorities. Such is the awful legacy of the Soviet Regime. To get past it will require more than a little time.
